Orwell’s desire for a new way of thinking about science

By Robert Colls

In October 1945, George Orwell responded to a letter from Mr J Stewart Cook in the leftwing weekly newspaper Tribune calling for more science education.

The call can hardly have come as a surprise. War had brought science and engineering to the fore – from the Spitfire fighter plane and radar to Bletchley Park’s codebreakers – and now that war was over, many thought it was time to build a brave new world. Science had won the war; the view was that it should build the peace.

Only the week before, in the same newspaper, Orwell had warned of the dangers posed by the atomic bomb.

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